NEWS

News From the Hubble Space Telescope

Hubble Finds Saturn's Rings Heating Its Atmosphere

March 30, 2023

$Against a black background, Saturn appears as a blue-and-white banded body encircled by a faint, deep blue system of rings. The planet and its rings are canted at about a 45 degree angle to the viewer. A dramatically dark blue equatorial region circles the middle of the planet like a belt. Above the rings and the equatorial region is an extended, whitish, latitudinal band that is 30 percent brighter than the surrounding regions. This brightness of this fat band diminishes gradually toward the northern latitudes. There, it is interrupted by what looks like a bright whitish cap around the north polar region. This is an aurora. A dark, pinpoint spot appears at the very top, center of the auroral cap. This represents the footprint of the spin axis of the planet. A small fraction of the southern hemisphere can be seen between the rings and the equatorial region, but it is dimmer than the northern hemisphere. From this angle, the southern hemisphere actually appears truncated above the south pole.$
Hubble Monitors Changing Weather and Seasons at Jupiter and Uranus

March 23, 2023
Hubble Captures Movie of DART Asteroid Impact Debris

March 01, 2023